‘OK?’ Daniel asked, as he slowed at a crossroads.
‘Yes. Not far now.’
They lapsed back into silence, and Kitty gazed out of the window at the Oxfordshire landscape, the fertile fields and prettified villages where no one ordinary could afford to buy a house anymore. A thread of music rose in her head, something very English, in the way Elgar was, or Britten, but –
‘What’s he like, the man who’s living there?’ Daniel asked.
Kitty stared at him: for a moment she had no idea what he meant. The tune was fading now, and she was irritated to lose her grasp on it. It’d had a pentatonic tonality that interested her; sad but somehow resolute. Moving forward, like the seasons, the ploughing and harvesting, the new roads carving through the landscape . . . She sighed.
‘He sounded nice,’ she said.
Daniel looked at her again, and Kitty felt a twist of that particular, painful emotion his smile evoked. Did he realise he’d interrupted something? No, how could he. He was just making conversation. That was what people did, in the car.
There were still moments when she wished she’d held her nerve after the concert and not allowed him to reel her in again: moments when the dread she’d felt, talking to Lou the other day, almost overcame her. Was it like this for other people, she wondered? Perhaps it was just her; perhaps she would only ever be able to love anyone in this exhausting, hopeful, contrary way. Perhaps nothing would ever transform her view of life in the way love was supposed to.
She smiled at herself then. That was a proper emo music student thought. ‘Left here,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly there.’
The car swung into the lane, passing the pub and the church and the row of cottages opposite the green. After another minute, Orchards came into view.
‘Here,’ Kitty said, and Daniel braked hard.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing like I expected.’
The place looked different, Kitty thought, as she got out to open the gate, but it was hard to say how. The lawn had been mown and the hedges clipped: was that all? A silver Range Rover and a Citroen with French plates were parked at the side of the house where her parents used to leave their cars, Henry’s string of vintage Triumphs and Flora’s steadfast Saab. The Saab, she supposed, was in France. Lou had wanted the last Triumph, but it had rusted so much over the winter that they’d ended up selling it for scrap.
Daniel parked next to the Range Rover. Turning towards the house, Kitty felt a sudden tremor as the past surged up in her mind: like slipping into a parallel universe, she thought. There was a moment of dizziness, but then Daniel was out of the car, putting a hand on her arm, and the front door was opened by a tall man wearing a tweed jacket.
‘You must be Kitty,’ he said. ‘I’m Martin Carver. I’m Flora’s – your mother’s – well, I suppose I’m the tenant.’
Kitty held out her hand, like a child remembering her manners. ‘This is my friend Daniel,’ she said.
Martin shook Daniel’s hand too, then stood back, deferring to Kitty’s superior claim on the house. ‘I’ve just made coffee,’ he said. ‘But please make yourselves at home. If you want to go over to the barn first . . .’
‘Coffee would be lovely,’ said Daniel. ‘Thanks.’
Kitty followed them into the hall. The inside looked both the same and different too: some of the furniture had gone, and lots of pictures – all those pictures by Henry’s school friend who’d turned out to be famous. The family album, Henry had called them, though never in Flora’s presence. Some of them Kitty had liked better than others, but the gaps on the walls where they’d hung were more obvious than Kitty had expected, making the house look somehow only half-alive. But what was left was utterly familiar – the pale yellow wallpaper, the hall table with the round mirror – too familiar, Kitty thought, for someone else to be in occupation.
‘My ex-wife is here this morning,’ Martin said, and on cue a woman came out of the kitchen. She was short and plump and smiling, but her smile changed the instant she saw Kitty and Daniel.
‘Daniel!’ she said. ‘Good Lord. Are you . . .?’
And then her expression changed again. It was curious, Kitty thought, how some people could hide so much, and others couldn’t help revealing every nuance of feeling. Friendliness, surprise and something that looked very much like dismay had flitted across this woman’s face in the last few seconds. Kitty looked at Daniel. His expression gave no hint that anything was amiss – but Daniel was good at presenting a blank face when he wanted to.
‘Miranda,’ he said. ‘How weird.’
The woman was staring at them both still. ‘I had no idea,’ she said. She turned to Martin, a look of appeal.
‘What?’ Kitty said. ‘What’s weird?’
‘Miranda’s my – sort of my godmother,’ Daniel said. ‘She was a friend of my mother’s. We haven’t seen much of each other lately, though.’
Kitty frowned. The expression on Miranda’s face didn’t quite fit that story, but Miranda was smiling again now, giving herself a little shake as though things were settling back into place now the surprise had worn off.
‘Let’s have that coffee,’ said Martin, and he turned away before Kitty could ask any more.
*
Kitty had imagined Martin following them around the house, asking polite questions and saying flattering things about Orchards, but he and Miranda stayed where they were when she put down her coffee cup.
‘Please help yourself,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you need a hand moving anything.’
‘There’s not much,’ Kitty said. ‘Just a few boxes.’ She looked at Daniel. She could see she wasn’t going to get away with not showing him round, now they were here. ‘But perhaps we could . . .’
‘Of course. Whatever. Take as long as you like.’ Martin gestured at Miranda with a hint of jolly resignation. ‘We’re talking weddings – our daughter’s about to tie the knot.’ Then he hesitated for a moment, looking at Kitty. ‘You’re very like your mother.’
‘Am I?’
‘You have her eyes,’ said Martin.
An odd expression flitted across his face then. Embarrassment, possibly? Kitty’s interest was piqued.
‘How do you know my mother?’ she asked. ‘I mean, how did you meet her? I ought to know, but I . . .’
‘We met in the village,’ said Martin. ‘In St Rémy. My house is there, and your mother was staying nearby. We ran into each other in the village shop.’
‘Really?’ said Kitty. It sounded spectacularly unlike Flora to strike up conversation with a stranger, but who knew. Life after Henry, she thought.
‘She’s staying in my house, you know.’
‘Yes.’ Kitty hesitated. ‘Yes, I know.’ She wanted to ask how Flora was, how he’d found her, but she was conscious of Daniel beside her and Miranda across the table, both of them listening in. ‘She says it’s a lovely house.’
‘And so is Orchards,’ said Martin. She thought he was going to say something else, but then he seemed to think better of it. Instead he smiled, and lifted a hand as if to dismiss them. ‘Make yourselves at home,’ he said.
‘That was a bit awkward,’ Kitty said, as Daniel shut the kitchen door behind them.
‘Tricky divorce,’ Daniel said, ‘but I suppose divorce always is. She’s remarried, I think.’
‘She looks the marrying kind,’ said Kitty, with an edge of malice. She hadn’t forgiven Miranda for that disconcerting moment in the hall: it had left a kind of mist in the air that made it even harder to see things straight.
‘I wonder what his house is like?’ Daniel said. ‘Where your mother’s staying?’
Kitty didn’t answer. She wondered whether Flora had talked to Martin about her and Lou. About Henry.
‘This is the snug,’ she said, pushing open a door.
The room smelled stale, as though no one had been in it since Flora left. It had been a kitchen for most of Kitty’s life, and she wondered whether it looked as
strange to outsiders in its new guise as it still did to her. The pristine carpet and sofas and the flat screen television looked implausible, like props brought in to camouflage a crime scene. Kitty could feel Daniel’s eyes on her, trying to read her reactions.
‘Did you see a lot of Miranda, when you were younger?’ she asked. ‘Did you know the family?’
‘Not really. My grandparents didn’t like them: they were suspicious of posh people. Girls with ponies and all that. But Miranda – I think she must have known my father too, unless my mother arranged things before she died. Every year, until I was twenty-one, she gave me some money from him. She used to take me out for tea. I liked that: it was our little ritual.’
‘But it stopped when you were twenty-one?’
‘I got the money then. The capital. Fifty grand.’
Kitty raised her eyebrows. ‘He’d left it to you?’
‘I guess. I never knew whether he was alive or dead.’
‘He must have been dead,’ said Kitty. ‘He must have died before your mother.’ He must have been married, she was thinking. Perhaps he was a famous musician, and that was where Daniel got his talent from. She glanced at Daniel, but there was no sign of curiosity in his face.
‘It must have been fun growing up here,’ he said.
‘Not really,’ said Kitty, but she felt a squeeze of guilt as she said it. There were happy memories, too: where were they today?
They went on into the sitting room – and then suddenly there it was, the joyous side of her childhood. Henry singing Ich Grolle Nicht at the top of his voice: their bedtime treat when Flora was out, or even when she wasn’t. Schumann lieder delivered at full histrionic volume, Henry banging out the piano accompaniment with great flourishes of his arms while she and Lou capered about in pyjamas. Them being a family, and Orchards a home. A sadness that felt almost like anger filled Kitty’s chest, and when she spoke again her voice sounded tight.
‘Do you want to see upstairs?’
‘Not if you don’t want me to,’ Daniel said.
It had definitely been a mistake to bring him, Kitty thought. A mistake to come at all. What had made her think she needed those boxes, anyway? She’d have taken them away sooner if she really needed them.
‘Let’s go over to the barn,’ she said.
Miranda appeared in the kitchen doorway as they passed again, and smiled in a way that looked like a prelude to conversation.
‘So are you two . . .’ she began, and then she gave a little laugh. ‘I’ve got weddings on the brain,’ she said. ‘You’re not on the verge of that, I suppose, with your father just . . .’
‘No,’ said Kitty.
Miranda laughed again. ‘Just checking up on my godson,’ she said. ‘Taking a belated interest.’ Her eyes lingered on Kitty as though appraising her, then swerved away. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’
‘Was she always like that?’ Kitty asked, as they crossed the yard.
‘Like what?’
‘A bit peculiar.’
‘She’s just being friendly,’ Daniel said. ‘She’s always been nice to me.’
‘Hmm.’
Kitty looked up towards the roof where the swallows nested. The sky was full of them today, circling and diving, and she could hear the chatter of chicks under the eaves as they approached the heavy double doors. The barn was dark inside, the smell of it deeply embedded in her memory, cold stone and creosote and dust.
Her belongings were stashed in the far corner. All Kitty really wanted now was to leave, but it seemed important to take something with them. An alibi, she thought. The boxes were labelled sheet music, photographs, diaries in big bold letters, as though the contents were ordinary objects that could be sorted and classified, not things that snagged at her memory, unravelling bits of the past the moment she looked at them.
As she stood staring at them, Daniel took her arm.
‘Kitty,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard coming back here. I’m sorry about the Miranda thing too, but it’s really not important. None of that matters to me – my mother or my father, none of it. God, I hardly remember my mother, even. I’m not hung up about my past, I promise.’
Kitty pulled her arm away.
‘And I am?’
‘I didn’t say that. It’s different for you. I know you think I don’t understand, because I don’t have a home like this or a father to mourn, but I do.’
Kitty brushed angrily at her eyes. This wasn’t fair, she thought. Taking advantage of her distress to press his suit. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just a bit . . .’
In the darkness she could feel the air trembling, the present and the past and the future wavering between doubt and certainty like a flickering picture, a hologram you could look at in several different ways.
‘I want to be with you, Kitty,’ Daniel said, his voice gentler now. ‘Ever since I met you I’ve known that’s what I wanted. It’s like – I know it’s a cliché, but it feels like chemistry. Like we’re meant to be together.’
‘Chemistry,’ said Kitty. ‘Maybe. But I . . .’ The magnetic attraction between atoms, she was thinking. The exchange of electrons in an ionic bond. Perhaps that was what it was like between them, but did that mean they were supposed to be together, or that they were elements that should be kept apart so they didn’t react? It seemed to her suddenly that being with Daniel made her into part of a compound that had more of his characteristics than hers. ‘I don’t know if chemistry’s a good thing,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s good for me.’
‘I know you think –’ he began, but she interrupted him.
‘You don’t know what I think,’ she said. ‘That’s the thing.’
Her voice was sharper than she meant, and she saw his reaction to it very clearly: the surprise, and the sudden dejection. Oh, she was silly, and perverse, and cruel. She must . . . But everything was more complicated here. Even Daniel could see that.
‘Give me a chance, Kitty,’ he said. ‘These last few months have been horrible. The last week or two we’ve – but we need more time. We need to be together, do things together.’
He put his arms around her, and Kitty stood very still, letting him hold her. It was the same old story, she thought – not knowing whether her misgivings were reasonable or whether she was conjuring them out of nothing. She wasn’t even sure, just now, whether she believed in Daniel’s certainty. Why would he want her, anyway? She was a mess. She wasn’t very nice to him, and she was a mess. But it was comforting to feel the roughness of his cheek against hers, the beat of his heart and the fierce strength of his arms.
She felt a deep sigh heaving up from her belly, the shudder of her ribcage as it passed. Perhaps it was better not to think so much. She heard an echo of that melody again, the measured melancholy of the pentatonic scale.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK.’
‘Good.’ Daniel held her tight for a moment longer, and Kitty shut her eyes, letting a feeling of calm settle inside her like a cadence resolving gently, softly. Above her a single swallow swooped through the shadows, the flutter of its wings disturbing the air for a moment before it was gone.
‘Come on,’ Daniel said, giving her a little shake. ‘Let’s get the things we came for, then get out of here.’
28
In the excitement over Lou and the baby, Flora had forgotten about Francine Abelard’s invitation. When the front doorbell rang one evening she assumed it must be someone looking for Martin, and as she went to answer it she corralled phrases of explanation in her head. Il passe l’été en Angleterre, she muttered to herself. Je reste dans sa maison.
But when she opened the door, there was Francine, her coat drawn up around her neck as though the night were ten degrees colder.
‘Hello,’ Flora said.
‘I have come to talk with you about the concert,’ said Francine.
There was a moment’s pause, during which Flora wondered why Francine had come in person rather than phoning, and Fra
ncine – or so it seemed to Flora – maintained a serene indifference to that question.
‘Do come in,’ Flora said. ‘Or would you rather . . .’
‘I am not in a hurry.’ Francine smiled.
‘Would you like coffee?’ Flora asked, stepping back from the doorway. ‘Or perhaps a glass of wine?’
Francine cocked her head suggestively. ‘Monsieur Carver has some very good cognac in his cupboard,’ she said. ‘I think maybe he could spare a little.’
*
‘Santé.’
Lifting her glass towards the dark sky, Francine smiled at Flora, a different smile from any she’d seen before. This one was definitely conspiratorial. Flora, who had suspected until that moment that she was to be cross-questioned about her relationship with Martin, or her custodianship of Les Violettes, felt a flush of relief.
‘Cheers,’ she said. She wasn’t a brandy drinker, but the taste of this venerable cognac seemed to fill her whole head. It made the night air feel warm on her skin, a strange but pleasing sensation.
‘It’s good,’ Francine said. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know much about brandy,’ Flora said. ‘I wouldn’t have dared to drink it without you.’ Despite the smiles of collusion, this felt rather like a game of draughts: if she made one careless move, Francine might take all her pieces.
‘It is – what’s the word in English? – médicinal. And good for talking.’
‘And for celebrating,’ Flora said. She hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone else yet, she realised. ‘My daughter’s pregnant.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Francine. ‘Does she have a nice husband?’
‘A nice wife,’ Flora said, and Francine laughed suddenly, loudly, unexpectedly.
‘Even better,’ she said. ‘We all need that, n’est-ce pas? A nice wife.’ She chuckled again. ‘I have no children,’ she said. ‘But I would like grandchildren.’
‘I never thought I’d have any,’ Flora said. There were so many things she’d never thought about, she realised, and so many others to which she’d devoted hours of thought that were of absolutely no consequence in the end. ‘Did you want children?’ she asked.
The Things You Do for Love Page 20